


In Medias Mortes

by ChaosMidge (NotQuiteInsane)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Captivity, Clerics, Dreams, Gen, Gods, Implied Cannibalism, Kidnapping, Paris Arc (Rusty Quill Gaming), Religious Crisis, Spoilers for Paris Arc (Rusty Quill Gaming), no beta we die like bertie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/pseuds/ChaosMidge
Summary: What if it had been Zolf, and not Sasha, that died beneath the Paris catacombs and been brought back by Mr. Ceiling?And what if this led to other things...
Comments: 15
Kudos: 50





	In Medias Mortes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skvadern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/gifts).



> This started as a chatfic in the When In Rome discord server, as I tend to do, and now it is here for your perusal. No beta, all mistakes are my own.

The catacombs are a disaster. Waking up in the white room is a nightmare. Zolf is more perturbed than he’d like to admit to be bearing the marks of an autopsy scar. Sasha is at his side when he wakes, uncharacteristically expressive. On a tray nearby are mechanical legs clearly meant to match the alien ports at the end of his stump legs.

Zolf pointedly ignores them and asks Sasha to bring him a wheelchair.

The next week is worse, somehow. Mr. Ceiling is both captor and naïve arbiter of their fate.

They escape. Everything is essentially the same. The perfect alternate world sucks them in then spits them back out again when they return to l’Arc d’Ordinateurs. Mr. Ceiling becomes Mr. Rubble and Paris begins to burn.

The dreams about Poseidon are different this time. Instead of trying to bring Zolf to heel, Poseidon has started to deny Zolf, to push him away without bothering to veil the disgust flowing from him in waves. To make matters worse, Zolf begins to see shapes in the water. He doesn't know what they are until the night when he dreams that his driftwood vessel is wrecked on shore and they're washing up around him.

Corpses, mouths stuffed to bursting with pomegranate seeds.

Zolf doesn't know what this means, but the next day when he wakes, he no longer feels his connection to Poseidon.

The crisis he feels nipping at his heels is both the same and different. For one, he’s got no heels since Poseidon never gave him his sea legs. For another, when he reaches for his magic, he finds it. Whole and attached, but _different._ And that's the point at which he starts to consider the mechanical legs.

He takes them out and looks at them and he frowns because while he knew that the spells on them were necromantic and holy in origin before, he didn't _understand_ them, but looking at them now, he could swear... He could swear they felt familiar.

He puts them away for a little while.

They don't get out of Paris this time around. Le Gourmand captures them, Wilde in the magic gag— _ugly_ , Zolf thinks and Hamid says as they’re dragged away—Zolf without mobility, Bertie heavily injured, Sasha dreading the return to the world of a crime lord, and Hamid struggling to control his claws because he's been hearing things about Le Gourmand that he really doesn't want to have confirmed.

(Whispers about certain _tastes_ and while Hamid doesn’t know _what_ he is, he knows that he’s rare. He knows that there’s something different about him. And _different_ is dangerous around Le Gourmand.)

At a certain point in their captivity, Zolf starts to realize that the healing magic he's been using on the others isn't doing the same sort of things to himself. Old scars begin to reopen—a gash on his arm that healed years ago, some of the injuries he sustained in the catacomb while fighting that _thing_ —though the place where the ports are surgically implanted in his legs seem fine. Against all odds.

At first, he suspects divine interference. The situation mirrors the effects of scurvy too closely for him to ignore. But he knows what Poseidon feels like and this isn’t that.

He's bleeding through his clothes every time he wakes up and the healing doesn't _stick_ and furthermore, it doesn't feel the same using it—and he doesn't think that's just because he's healing at the command of Le Gourmand. Healing under threat of violence isn't exactly something he'd expect to feel this strange.

And then he dreams.

He dreams of pomegranates and a river and a field full of dead flowers. He dreams of a weeping woman that he doesn't recognize. When he walks, he walks through the field to reach her, in an attempt to comfort a clearly grieving woman, he walks with metal legs that push magic into the flowers around him. As they bloom, petals ranging in shades from bone white to magnolia yellow--strangely bright in comparison to everything else around him--the woman looks up with her tear streaked face and he sees that half of her face is nearly transparent through to the skull. He can see the white of the bone and it looks like the flowers around him. He can see the golden brilliance of her eyes and it looks like the flowers around him.

"Who are you," he asks, and she stares. She stares with the same kind of pressure that Poseidon had impressed upon him and he recognizes it as the presence of a god. It's heavy. It's heavier even than the dirt and mud and bones that had buried him in the Paris catacombs.

He doesn't know her name. He doesn't know of any god like this. This is no Athena or Artemis or Aphrodite. This is no Hestia, no Hera. No Demeter.

The goddess starts when he thinks the last name and begins to weep yet again.

The dream ends soon after and he wakes with more confusion than he had from those dreams of Poseidon's consternation.

The next time he heals the skin over Hamid's spine back together, he thinks he sees the flesh knit back together in twirling patterns like roots or vines or grasping tendrils. He doesn't know any gods with dominion over plants that would have a face half-skull like. He doesn't know a god that would be crying.

He doesn't know why he feels such grief when he heals.

He doesn't know why Hamid's tears turn from those of pain to those of loss.

They give him back the mechanical legs at some point, mostly because Le Gourmand has decided he's biddable and it makes toting the prisoners around the sewers a little bit easier. Zolf doesn't think the guards have noticed that the driftwood dolphin around his neck has started cracking and putting forth shoots. He doesn't think anyone notices when Sasha sneaks him a dagger she lifted off a guard while he dragged her off to Le Gourmand's study.

He's certain they haven't noticed that his tanned sailor's face is turning paler by the day. It's a pallor that can't be explained by their extended stay in the sewers.

Wilde's noticed. He _knows_ Wilde has noticed.

He doesn't think that Wilde knows the whys or wherefores, but the gears are ticking and a tight smile on Zolf's face is enough to encourage his progress. There's more knowledge stored away in Wilde's head than he will ever allude to, the hazards of a Trinity education and a Meritocratic appointment. His bardic studies perhaps gave him a leg up, too.

The dreams continue. Always the same. He walks across a field of dead plants and they burst into flower at his toes—toes that are steadily gaining more feeling, toes that he can move individually and flex like real flesh. The woman—no, the goddess, _his_ goddess—is still weeping and he can feel the overwhelming sense of grief emanating from Her. He can feel it in his bones.

Zolf still doesn't know the goddess's name.

Bertie comments on his complexion. It's surprising, but Zolf figures he probably looks like death at this point. In the glimpses he's caught in the shard of mirror a guard allowed, his green eyes have gone muddy. He's got a suspicion that they aren't going to stop at brown.

The next time he sleeps he's no longer in the dead field. He's in a grove full of spindly, branching trees, limbs heavy with pink-red fruits he recognizes as pomegranates. He knows that if he were to cut one open, the juice would be red as the blood with which he's become so familiar. The tree he approaches is more verdant than the others, the fruits more saturated in color. It all looks surreal, unlike the rest of this too-sharp, too-immediate dream.

In his peripheral vision, a pale hand reaches out beside him to pluck a fruit. He startles and looks to his right, where the goddess is standing and staring at the pomegranate in Her hand.

"It has been a long time since I have seen one of your kind," She says, voice warm as spring sun after the chill of winter.

"A dwarf?" Zolf asks and is surprised when She isn't angered by his impudence.

"A mortal," the goddess replies, a smile playing around Her face. "What favor would you ask of the Queen of the Dead?"

Zolf stares as She begins to peel the pomegranate with Her bare hands, red juice bleeding from the tears like wounds. It stains Her fingers and seeps beneath her nails.

"Your name would be a good start."

The golden eyes flash with a hint of the anger he'd expected before. "Have your kind so easily forgotten the name of their eternal caretaker?"

"We forget a lot of things, ma'am. It's in the nature of mortals, probably. And it's been a long time since the fall of Rome." Zolf stares at the ruby seeds that She offers him in a red tinged hand. "I don't make a habit of eating in dreams."

The goddess smiles. "It is a gift. You are in danger, are you not? Take them and save your friends. We will speak more afterward."

When Zolf wakes, there are three bright pomegranate seeds clutched in the palm of his hand, plump and unburst even under the pressure of his fingers.

As he slips them in the mouths of Wilde, Sasha, and Hamid, he thinks that this is probably the price of dealing with gods—choices that lead to death.

Though he's certain that no one will feel grief over Bertie.

When they burst out of the sewers and into open air, it is a cold relief.

Wilde grips his arm and as the ruby red fades from his eyes, he whispers in Zolf's ear the name of his new patron goddess.

"Persephone."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you to Rome, you guys are the best and bring out the best in me. Here's to many more 2am chatfics. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Medias Mortes [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28296561) by [sunny_jordy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunny_jordy/pseuds/sunny_jordy)




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